It’s therefore no surprise that countless organizations have thrown antiquated performance management strategies out the window, making room for the more frequent and meaningful check-ins associated with a continuous feedback loop. These companies – including Microsoft, Adobe, Deloitte, and GE – report positive results after switching, including improved productivity and innovation, reduced turnover, and increased engagement. 

Don’t get us wrong – year-end reviews are still important. In fact, annual performance reviews are a great way to celebrate achievements and learnings in the past year and provide holistic feedback for employees. They just shouldn’t be your only performance management strategy.

Your best bet is employing continuous performance management that combines regular check-ins and year-end reviews to support employees, reflect on learnings, and plan for the future.  

Below are three ways to ensure your organization’s 1:1 meetings are as positive and productive as possible for your workforce.

1. Mandate Regularly-Scheduled Meetings 

Let’s be honest – nothing makes the heart pound faster than an unplanned calendar invite from a superior. What’s this about? What do I need to prepare? Am I getting fired?

Regularly scheduled check-ins mitigate that stress and fear. And there are other benefits than just preventing spikes in cortisol levels. Regularly-scheduled 1:1s:

• Protect and prioritize manager-employee time
• Give both parties time to prepare talking points 
• Help faster identification of roadblocks on projects
• Foster a stronger and more positive working relationship

Note: Managers shouldn’t have sole control over the 1:1 agenda. When each party can add talking points, both people enter the meeting prepared and confident. 

2. Establish a 1:1 Template for Your Organization

If you’re looking to build a stronger performance management strategy, consider establishing a 1:1 template for use across your organization. By doing so, you’ll:

• Build a more equitable workplace. When all managers track performance on the same scale, your data is clean and aligned for reporting. You can use these reports to help determine bonuses, promotions, and any trends across your organization.
• Provide a similar experience across teams. Your employees deserve to have a great employee experience, but that’s hard to do when each team (or manager) has their own way of conducting 1:1s. If some people are having in-depth conversations while others are having 2-minute check-ins, the disparity will eventually cause frustration and distrust.
• Prompt necessary conversations. Most people struggle to give constructive feedback, even when it’s necessary. The key is establishing a respectful and trusting relationship to give space for these conversations. Ben Wigert, author of Re-Engineering Performance Management, explains, “Addressing sensitive topics like diversity and inclusion, pay, promotion, or under-performance are all going to feel scary if you haven’t already built up some understanding and trust.”

Note: There’s a fine line between regular check-ins and micromanaging. Make sure your 1:1 template doesn’t just ask about nitty-gritty project details. It should instead encompass prompts for an overarching check-in on employee wellness, sentiment, and goal progress. 

PrimePay’s Performance Management Pro provides templates for managing employee performance (think check-ins, goal setting, IDPs, and 360 reviews) to keep management transparent and helpful. 

3. Encourage the Discussion of Long-Term Career Goals

Want to amplify your performance management strategy and retain your people? Encourage 1:1 conversations around career aspirations. 

Although many studies report that employees seek these conversations (and leave roles when they don’t happen), very few managers use 1:1 meetings to discuss personal and professional goals. Talk about a massive miss regarding career mapping and the employee lifecycle. 

Consider:

• Including career goal prompts in your 1:1 agenda
• Encouraging managers to host quarterly review meetings that relate to career aspirations
• Offering learning and development opportunities 
• Suggesting that employees create personal goals to help develop soft skills (such as “reduce filler words in presentations” or “develop a better time management strategy for projects”)

Note: Hold a performance management training session for all managers. Use this time to equip managers with the right goal-setting language, walk them through the preferred 1:1 template, and share tips and tricks for successful feedback sessions. 

With performance management software, managers can track (and regularly visit) employee performance and develop plans to help them achieve their future career goals. 

Evolving Your Performance Management Strategy

If you want employees to be engaged, productive, and happy, you need structure in place to help them succeed. As you know, these policies and procedures must be routinely updated to provide the best workplace experience. 

It’s therefore important to continuously evolve your performance management strategy to ensure managers and employees feel supported. Moreover, a proactive and inclusive approach creates a positive culture and motivates employees to meet their goals. Ultimately, when you offer support throughout the employee lifecycle, you create a healthier and more productive workplace.

The post 3 Tips to Improve Your Continuous Performance Management Strategy appeared first on PrimePay.

No one in the human resources (HR) space is trying to make the argument that finance leadership is easy. No — it’s a challenging role, and it’s only growing in importance. In fact, in one report from The Institute of Management Accountants, 72% of respondents felt that the role of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) will either “increase or increase significantly” in importance over the next three to five years.

But what if there was a way to make a challenging role easier, so finance leaders could focus on the long-term strategic concerns that are increasingly expected of them?

Today, there are so many groundbreaking organizational technologies available to finance and HR leaders who are willing to explore their options. With the right human capital management (HCM) solution, finance and HR leaders can lean away from the rote, manual tasks that introduce errors and distract from the strategic, future-focused roles finance and HR can be. A lower total cost of ownership, increased data accuracy, and better business intelligence combines to revolutionize the role of finance.

Here are four critical ways the right HCM can add value to the role of the finance leader:

#1. Eliminate Manual Processes Across Finance and HR Teams

WHY IT MATTERS:

Manual work is a burden for finance and HR leaders alike. It was recently reported that 81% of CFOs believe they suffer from the most intensive daily manual work in comparison to any other role in C-Suite. Our own survey sheds more light on exactly how much time finance leaders lose to manual work, with 33% of CFOs saying they lose 11-15 hours per week to manual tasks.

In many organizations, the HR environment is also burdened with overly complicated manual systems that slow down operations. Everyday tasks require so much time to manage that there’s little time left over to dedicate to bigger, more strategic goals. That’s simply too much time lost to manual processes — and too much opportunity lost for collaborating across the finance and HR departments.

HOW HCM HELPS:

The most foundational benefit of implementing an HCM is that it offers you the ability to streamline and eliminate manual processes across both finance and HR departments. Automating common tasks and processes across HR and finance can streamline the workload on those departments so they can gain back the hours and focus necessary to align to business objectives.

The finance team can automate time-consuming reporting and data entry. The HR team can take manual processes like estimating labor costs and evaluating employee lifecycle and churn and update them with workflows that both increase efficiency while also lowering the risk of errors. And, ultimately, the back office can take a holistic, collaborative approach to the important things that flow between finance and HR, such as compliance risk, data integrity, and greater efficiency.

#2. Provide a Single Core System for HR, Benefits, and Payroll

WHY IT MATTERS:

Often, HCM solutions separate HR, benefits, and payroll and build out these functions over time through acquisition and partnerships. But in that process of combining the functions, they don’t just fall into place in a streamlined and effective workflow — in most cases, they are still a work in progress. When trying to connect with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools, this can create many difficulties and inefficiencies when mapping fields, automating workflows, and sourcing data.

HOW HCM HELPS:

What Finance leader wants to track down key information and data from three systems trying to operate as one? Finance leaders need a system they can lean on, and they should lean on an HCM that has these three core systems from the ground up as one core solution. When HR and finance systems are closely integrated and connected, the finance and HR departments can operationalize their organizational strategies. The connections between the two become crystal clear — and so do the missed opportunities, allowing these departments to grow closer and achieve more together.

For example, the right HCM allows departments to reference the budgeted payroll versus the actual payroll. Finance and HR can then work together to manage the constant state of flux taking place when employees are leaving roles or changing positions. They can then look deeper into these differences with a powerful tool like position management, which allows finance to stay on top of real-time actuals as change is taking place. In the end, this supports better, more accurate forecasting and strategic business decisions.

#3. See Data Across Multiple Time Periods

WHY IT MATTERS:

Accurate planning while essential factors are in flux is nothing less than challenging. And yet that’s what HR and finance leaders must do day in and day out as they balance the needs of the organization and the availability of a shifting workforce. They often need to peer into headcount, enrolled benefits, or accounting reports to reconcile today — and compare it to the same reports that have come before across multiple time periods.

HOW HCM HELPS:

With an HCM tool that provides “time machine” visibility, finance leaders can access accurate views of retroactive data. Being able to see point-in-time data from the past is incredibly helpful in planning for the budget and workforce needs of the future. Leaders can identify trends from daily historical data, right-size future benefits packages, and inform other compensation decisions more accurately, and more.

Is this possible without an HCM that combines finance and HR data? No. Manual processes, siloed data, and disparate software systems make it far too difficult to align efforts and have oversight into what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. There’s simply no comparison between what can be accomplished with a spreadsheet-based planning workflow and an automated, integrated HCM.

#4. Capture Robust Reporting With One Click

WHY IT MATTERS:

According to the Brainyard Winter 2020 Survey, “using data more effectively” was the No. 1 priority for finance respondents, and “producing better reporting on KPIs” was in the top three priorities. Clearly, being able to capture and analyze more robust reporting would be a step up for finance leaders who otherwise cannot trust the data they pull or require so much time and effort to pull the data that it doesn’t happen frequently enough to have a real impact.

HOW HCM HELPS:

When a finance leader is able to pull data from a single streamlined solution for HR, payroll, and benefits, that data capture, analysis, and reporting process is streamlined, too. HR and finance leaders are able to view both the organizational data and financial data across time and do so quickly and easily.

They can then accurately estimate important details like:

• Projected budgets
• Staffing plans
• Current headcounts
• Historical labor cost trends

Many organizations see positive results from applying technology to their finance and HR functions. In fact, 76% of finance executives surveyed by Deloitte claim that their technology investments have yielded better insights and cost reduction.

The demands placed on finance leaders continues to evolve

The demands placed on finance professionals by company executives are continuously evolving. It’s not easy to balance growth with spend and constantly assess revenue while analyzing budgetary risks. It’s not easy, and finance leaders shouldn’t have to do it alone when there’s the right technology out there that can help. When an organization integrates its financial systems with an HCM solution like SyncHR, it unlocks powerful tools and insights that make the finance leaders more effective and more future-focused.

Keep your employees engaged and motivated from hire to retire.

PrimePay can partner with you to offer support throughout the entire employee lifecycle. Learn more about how PrimePay can help you streamline Payroll & Human Resources processes.

Schedule a call today

Please read our disclaimer here.

The post Simplifying Finance: 4 Ways HCM Adds Value to Finance Leaders appeared first on PrimePay.

As it turns out, the time-honored tradition of annual performance reviews simply aren’t delivering the real-time feedback and performance improvement employees need to succeed in their roles – or capturing the data managers and human resources professionals need to make good decisions about talent. Instead, organizations need to consider modern performance management software solutions that create more efficient, effective, and less expensive ways to measure and improve employee performance. 

Here are six things you need to look for when selecting a performance management system that will help you see the whole picture of employee performance over time and capture actionable intelligence for decision-making:

Employee Performance Management System Checklist

• Performance Reports
• Continuous Performance Tracking
• Completion Tracking
• Peer and 360 Reviews
• Face-to-Face Reviews
• Integration With Other HCM Tools

1.  Performance Reports

From the organization’s perspective, the most important performance management system criteria is customizable and thorough reporting abilities. You need to be able to quickly and accurately review employee data at the departmental and individual level, and you need to be able to trust that this data is up-to-date and accurate as close to real-time as possible. Look for features like Predictive Performance and Real-Time Feedback that show you how you’ll be able to access the performance data you capture. 

2.  Continuous Performance Tracking

Business needs change from day to day, even minute to minute, so it’s no wonder organizations can’t capture an accurate view of employee performance in an annual performance review. Modern performance management software allows employees to check in and update their performance on a regular schedule, promoted by automated alert, so that your performance data is always up-to-date.  

3.  Completion Tracking

Companies that manually track employee professional development or training waste valuable time. Today’s performance management software allows employees to access training modules digitally through a learning management system (LMS) so that employees and managers alike can track progress and check in on the completion of different training tasks. This is especially important in industries where monitoring and reporting on training is a part of maintaining compliance. 

4.  Face-to-Face Reviews

The annual performance review may not work as a sole performance management solution, but that doesn’t mean the face-to-face or 1:1 meeting format doesn’t bring a lot of value to the process. An effective employee performance management system will allow you to schedule and incorporate data from a traditional face-to-face meeting, as well, so that managers and employees can continue to nurture warm and responsive personal relationships. 

5.  Peer and 360 Reviews

In addition to face-to-face reviews, advanced performance management software allows you to incorporate peer and 360 reviews. These reviews allow employees to review anonymous feedback from their peers, supervisors, and subordinates about important performance metrics like communication and job skills. Bringing this kind of data into the performance review process allows managers to capture the full picture of an employee’s contributions to identify areas where they excel and areas where they may be able to improve. 

6.  Integration With Other HCM Tools

In today’s digital and connected work environments, organizations often deploy different tools and technologies to achieve all of their goals. That’s why it’s especially critical for your performance management software to integrate easily with other HCM tools, like talent management, recruiting, benefits, and more. This also makes it easier to bring a new performance management software into your organization, as you can continue using your preferred platforms for some tasks while still upgrading the way you monitor and improve employee performance. 

If you’re like the majority of organizations, talent is your highest priority and largest expense. And yet you’ve had to work within the limitations and inefficiencies of annual performance reviews to monitor, reward, and improve employee performance. Fortunately, there’s now a better way to manage all facets of employee performance, and it starts with choosing an employee performance management system that offers the six benefits listed here. 

The post 6 Must-Have Features of Performance Management Software appeared first on PrimePay.